CO129-235 - Public Offices - 1887 — Page 436

Modifying

Rome

Z

the Terms of the

Convention previously signed at

Sentrin

on the 26th

of April 1886 for

regulating the conditions of

trade between Tonking

the overland

and the

adjacent Chinese Provinces.

am Iarn to request that in

this despatch before Secretary

laying

Sir Henry

Holland

will move

Сити

you

with

any

to furnish Lord Salisbury

observations de

may

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ar

Your

have to offer thereon

Sit

most obedicil

humble servant

P.Wennin

CONFIDENTIAL.

Printed for the use of the Foreign Office. October 1887.

€. 0. 21 539 İRECE

AEG? 26 OCT 87

433

No. 1.

Sir J. Walsham to the Marquis of Salisbury.-(Received September 6.)

(No. 52. Very Confidential.) My Lord,

THE Treaty of Peace, Friendship, and Commerce, which terminated the state of

Peking, July 19, 1887. hostilities between France and China, was signed at Tien-tsin on the 5th June, 1885, and the ratifications were exchanged at Peking on the 28th November following. A Decree of the President ordering the full and entire execution of the Treaty was issued on the 25th January, 1886.

This Decree, which embodied the text of the Treaty, was forwarded to your Lord- ship by Her Majesty's Ambassador at Paris in his Excellency's despatch of the 27th January, 1886, a copy of which will be found at page 49 (No. 66) of the Printed Correspondence laid before Parliament in that year and marked "China No. 1."

By the IIIrd Article of the Treaty it was agreed that Special Commissioners should be appointed to mark out the boundary between Tonquin and China, and by the VIth Article it was further agreed that the conditions under which overland commerce between Tonquin and the three neighbouring Chinese provinces of Yunnan, Kwang-si, and Kwang- ton should be carried on, were to be determined by other Commissioners named for the purpose by the High Contracting Parties.

Owing to a variety of circumstances the Boundary Commissions had not completed their task, or even nearly so, when the Convention for regulating the conditions of the overland trade was signed at Tien-tsin on the 25th April, 1886, by the French and Chinese Plenipotentiaries.

A copy of this Convention, accompanied by an "Exposé des Motifs" and a Bill authorizing its ratification, which had passed the French Chamber of Deputies, was transmitted to the Earl of Rosebery in Lord Lyons' despatch No. 185, Confidential, of the 9th July, 1886, and by the Secretary of State to me in his Lordship's No. 211 of the 23rd July.

The Convention, however, has hitherto remained unratified as far as France is concerned, and on the arrival here about a year ago of M. Constans as Envoy Extra- ordinary of the French Republic it became generally known that the French Government were anxious to obtain more favourable conditions than those contained in the Act negotiated by his predecessor, M. Cogordan.

At any rate, M. Constans has been busily engaged since he came to Peking in discussing with the Chinese Government the question of revising the Convention of the 25th April, and it is only quite recently that he has been able to conclude his negotia- tions. M. Constans is now about to return to France.

These negotiations have been complicated by difficulties connected with the Boundary Commissions. The Commission for delimitating the frontier between Yünnan and Tonquin had finished its labours, which commenced from the point where the Red River crosses the frontier above Lao-kai, and terminated at the boundary-line between the Provinces of Yunnan and Kwang-si. No attempt has yet been made to fix the frontier beyond the Red River in the direction of Burmah.

The frontier between Tonquin and the Province of Kwang-si had also been more or less satisfactorily determined, but when the Commissioners for settling the boundary of the Kwang-tung Province were on their way to the place of meeting on the coast beyond Mongkai, some of the French members coming from Hanoi were attacked, probably by

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